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Show 600 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT might have come through the transfer to the Forest Service of the forfeited Oregon and California Railroad lands.96 The Forest Service also recommended that the area of forest land in state ownership be increased from 16 million to 77 million acres by I960.97 These extensive recommendations for withdrawing land from cultivation, removing farmers to other tracts, and acquiring large acreages for the Federal government's forest program and for other agencies met with no great favor in Congress, particularly from some of the states which, the Resources Board Report seemed to indicate, had large areas that were submarginal. Emergency funds allocated to the land program by the Executive branch carried the programs along for a time but congressional appropriations were less generous. James A. Maddox in his study of "The Farm Security Administration" has shown that a total of $95,208,467 was made available for land purchases from emergency funds and from specific appropriations by Congress and that on June 30, 1943, Congress prohibited the use of Federal funds 94 National Resources Board Report, 1934, Part 2, "Report of the Land Planning Gomittee," pp. 209-213. In 1940 the Forest Service through L. F. Kneipp, Assistant Chief, reported there were 52 million acres of private and state owned land within the national forests and purchase units of which 36,155,000 should be administered by the Federal government if the best and most economical administration was to be accomplished. In addition, Kneipp showed by map some 55 million additional acres which he thought should be in national forests. The cost was estimated at $575,406,000. "Forest Lands of the United States," Hearings Before the Joint Committee on Forestry, Congress of the United States, 76th Cong., 3d sess., (Washington, 1940), Part 7, pp. 1977-78. 97 John Kerr Rose, "Survey of National Policies on Federal Land Ownership with Special Reference to Studies Conducted by Committees of the Congress or Commissions of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government," S. Doc, 85th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 1, No. 56 (Serial No. 11992), p. 39. for further purchases.98 The total quantity of land placed in national forests by 1950 which had been acquired under the Weeks Act, the land purchase program of the 1930's, and by exchange was 21,582,584 acres-still far from the goal of those who had first persuaded the government to buy land for expansion of its forest conservation program. In addition to this total, the Soil Conservation Service held 7,014,347 acres, acquired under the land purchase program, part of which was later to be transferred for administrative purposes to the Forest Service to be operated as national grasslands.09 While these totals were well short of the goals of the Copeland Report and the report of the Land Planning Committee, a later generation was to concede that the proposals of these reports had not been very realistic both with respect to submarginal land and the extent to which Americans wanted privately owned land to pass into government ownership. Interior Timberlands Jurisdiction The transfer of the forest reserves to the Department of Agriculture in 1905 left considerable timberland under the jurisdiction of the General Land Office.100 This was estimated many years later (in 1960, when the quantity had been reduced) at 98 Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1950, pp. 31, 96. 99 R. D. Davidson, Federal and State Rural Lands, 1950, with Special Reference to Grazing (Washington, 1952), p. 4. In 1952 3,803,656 acres were managed by the Forest Service as "national grasslands," mostly in North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Texas. Forest Service, National Forest Areas (1962), pp. 1, 8. The increase of land in the national forests by purchase and exchange to 1930 was 3,700,000; in 1930 to 1934 it was 2,800,000; from 1935 to 1939 it was 12,892,000; from 1940 to 1944 it was 3,051,000; and from 1945 to 1949 it was 1,839,000 acres. Forest Service, Timber Resources for America's Future (Washington, 1958), p. 315. 100 Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1960, p. 257. |